jenova
by prositen
Summary: There are two sides to every story. Here is another side of the Cetra.


**_jenova_**

Calamity from the skies. Is that what I am to you?

Of course, there was never anyone that would listen to my story. How ironic that I, the once-victim, the last of my people, is a despised butcher now. Slayer of the Ancients, of the holy, children-like innocents.

I haven't always been this monstrous _anomaly_ you seem to take me for, though. Once I was more than a thing to be regarded as an unholy menace. I too had a people of my own, a planet where we flourished; a _life_ where the Cetra and their narrow-minded so called descendants played no part. We thought we were alone. We thought we were gods. The power we had.. Ah, on _our_ planet, in that time, gods we were.

Never ever even speculating about the possibility that other intelligences could reach us; we didn't stand much chance when the Cetra did just that. We were a peaceful people, back then. Weapons or defense systems were nothing we had considered inventing. Why should we? Who would dare to harm us?

****

* * * * *

Their ships fell down from the skies like raindrops, and where they walked, the grounds shattered. Our cities were crushed under the weight of the cargo ships landing. As we moved our settlements elsewhere, not ready for confrontation and not seeing the need for one, we observed them putting up pre-fabricated factories with pipes reaching down deep into the ground. 

After we had decided to keep quiet, it all went downhill quickly. The Cetra soon covered the planet with their mystical machines and devices, and we moved away; again and again we fell back in our wish for peace. In the end, we had to withdraw into the core of the planets, sealing the cave-openings behind us to finally get a haven. It wasn't perfect - we shared the space with monstrous blind mammals and fluorescent larvae - but for a while we were safe.

We were too much of a nature loving species to be able to stay down there, though, so in time we decided to negotiate. That the few of us who had stayed outside had been murdered on sight, we blissfully ignored. This time, it would be different. With our telepathic skills, we thought we could communicate with the invaders regardless of our language differences, and so we sent out a diplomat.

She came back only a day after she had left. Most of us - oh, how naïve we were - thought that a good sign, believed that the Cetra had agreed to our propositions right away. A few, pessimistic ones cried about doom and condemnation, but there are always people like that and they were ignored.

Unfortunately, they were the ones that had been right. We others should have seen the signs earlier. That is my greatest shame, that I didn't do anything earlier. 

****

* * * *

Our diplomat had begun receiving thoughts and mind images as soon as she reached the surface - and what she saw terrified her. 

The search for their so-called 'Promised Land' was the Cetra's ultimate goal. That end surpassed everything else, and was what had made them a space faring race. Traveling from planet to planet throughout the universe, they prepared themselves for their living heaven. By accumulating enough energy, they would be able to open a gate to another universe, one where they would be true gods. That energy was most easily found in the 'life' of a planet.

Each new planet they found was just an enormous power supply for them.

Our home, our earth - it was just one in an endless count of planets where the Cetra stayed for a while and sucked out all the power they could. When they took off again, they left the planet completely depleted. Where the Cetra had been, no life would ever grow again.

All thoughts were of this project, all emotions was longing for that distant future - and a complete contempt for other species. What did they care about people like us? We were just a means towards their glorious end.

That the last Cetra would be protecting your planet from the same fate is quite ironic, that too. Funny how contradictory history can be, when seen from afar.

****

* * * * *

By the time we decided to fight back, it was already over. As we few survivors started crawling out from our secluded holes in the ground, we found that our enemies had already left. Perhaps they never even noticed us at all; our dwindling numbers nothing more than a minor nuisance that would never be a danger.

For us, the years needed to advance our technology enough to be able to pursue the destroyers were nothing. We had nothing else to do. Our people was doomed, but we would bring as many of those accursed Cetra we could into death as we went there ourselves. The need to redeem ourselves was greater than the will for survival of our species. 

Condemned to an eternity in their shadow, we followed their tracks. Every planet we arrived to was already used up, it's resources nothing but a tool getting the Cetra slightly closer to their ultimate goal.

****

* * * * *

This planet was to be used as the others; depleted of its resources then left to recover on its own if it could. This planet, though, would instead become a witness of our final battle for revenge. This was where we at last caught up with the hated Cetra, where we would put our skills to test. This was were they wiped us out, but not without paying a dear price for it.

We fought with weapons that our finest scientists invented and later improved as we learned more about our enemies. We fought with magic that we hadn't even heard of, hadn't _imagined _before we encountered the Cetra. Still our numbers dwindled, since we simply weren't good enough.

They had done this before and they were _so_ good at it.

Even so, we could have won. At the end, the few battle-hardened veterans that remained had learned to recognize our enemies' weak points, and our strikes were deadly.

Yes, we could have turned the tide if it weren't for that accursed Cetra woman... She had learned how to summon powerful spirits to aid their cause, and she taught her new skill to the others. 

I could have withstood everything but this. What finally gave me my mortal wound wasn't the horrible pain and heat of the attack, but the fact that it was Ifrit who did it to me. Ordinary demons and monsters we could have fought - but these were our lost brothers and sisters! The ghosts of our people, killed in battle by the same ones that now commanded them against us!

Ifrit, who had helped me design and build our first space ship. Ifrit, who would have married my sister. Ifrit, who was one of the first killed by the Cetra since our arrival.

I don't know how the Cetra managed to bring him back to battle. Something about that precious Lifestream they can go on about for hours, I suppose. I don't know how they made him fight for _them_ either. Now it is too late to ask, since they are all gone.

I guess they thought I was dead. Together with the rest of my people, I was sealed away so they wouldn't have to see us nor think about us. That is probably what saved me from my death. Nothing reached me here, not even time. Well, time did pass. I've spent millennia raging against them, and then against you _humans_. 

****

* * * * *

We finally got our revenge, though. Not the way we had planned, but does it really matter which hand that deals out the justice?

Even in my slumber of near-death, I heard the Cetra suffer and then finally die from the viruses we had unknowingly brought with us. Irony at work once again, that our insignificant fever diseases would eradicate them when our weapons could not.

Only the young ones survived. The children endured, if the Cetra with their cold hearts ever were children. Nothing of the Grand Plan remained, nothing of the splendid technology or the powerful magic the Cetra were so proud of. Only the children, who did not know their history and even if they had, would not care. 

Growing up in the wastelands of war, they found ruins of a great civilization and made up stories to explain everything. A few even remembered the battle against us, and so we became monsters. Those sagas in time became history, and here we are now. I am a monster, and the Cetra are benevolent Ancients sent here to protect the planet. Protect the planet! Hah. If they hadn't got stuck here, this planet would have been as dead as mine is.

****

* * * * *

They named me Jenova. At the battlefields they cried it after me as if it were a horrible insult. Perhaps it was. I don't know if that word ever held any other significance in their petty, _ugly_ language so unlike ours. To be honest I don't care. Nothing they say will ever make any difference. Not now, not ever.

I am the last one.

And since the winners are the one to write the history books, I _am _the calamity from the skies.

Hah. Then I'll bear my epithet with pride.

**_end._**


End file.
